Quotes About Interpretation

You didn't have to write to be a poet, you didn't have to create things to be an artist. Her mother's spiritual Endeavor was itself a kind of art—an art of invisibility.

Is this irony, hypocrisy, or a contradiction? I'm never sure which term is appropriate." "Call it all three if you want," Andreas said. "Chutzpah. That's a fourth term.

Joey described to her the sleek warm neatness of her turds as they slid from her anus and fell into his open mouth, where, since they were only words, they tasted like excellent dark chocolate.

Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us. If they don't agree, it follows either that they have not yet been exposed to the relevant facts or else that they are blinded by their interests and ideologies.

How do we picture the past? Does it become clearer as it drifts into the distance? Can it be seen from more angles, a better vantage, with finer instruments for optics, and more supporting documentation to draw from? Or has its essence already vanished, leaving space for lies to multiply and thrive, spreading across paperwork that is good for nothing except, perhaps, a nervous acting captain's next snack?

All the best paintings made you see various levels of reality at once. They sent you inward as well as outward.

there was language everywhere; you could read the city, the city was a grammar

on the one hand there's mansplaining, and on the other, there's the sound of a woman quoting the mansplaining to another woman.

We admit the presence of no author, no oeuvre, and no genre. The text stands bare. . . . We admit nothing outside of the text.

It's the side-by-side culture of the Talmud I like so much. 'On the one hand' and 'on the other hand' is frustrating for people seeking absolute faith, but for me it gives religion an ambidextrous quality that suits my temperament.

Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.

Words never mean what we want them to mean.

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.

i couldn't speak the language of his feelings

I realized that your mother couldn't see the emptiness, she couldn't see anything...All of the words I'd written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to hear at all?

Without context, we'd all be monsters.

Can't you even tell me if I'm on the right track? Buckminster purred, and Dad shrugged his shoulders again. But if you don't tell me anything, how can I ever be right? He circled something in an article and said, Another way of looking at it would be, how could you ever be wrong?

Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?

I couldn't tell what he was feeling, because I couldn't speak the language of his feelings.

And I love the idea of books being more than books, or being, rather, something other than books. I think the ideal experience of my book would be like listening to music.

Mr. Black started singing a song in some weird language, which I guess was Philippinish.

Alex?" I told him yes. "You're my translator, right?" I asked him to be slow, because I could not understand him. In truth I was manufacturing a brick wall of shits.

And I love the idea of books being more than books, or being, rather, something other than books. I think the ideal experience of my book would be like listening to music. And I love the idea of books being more than books, or being, rather, something other than books. I think the ideal experience of my book would be like listening to music.

The ground is still filled iwth rings, and money, and pictures, and Jewish things. I was only able to find a few of them, but they fill the earth. The hero did not ask me once what she was saying. I am not certain if he knew what she was saying, or if he knew not to inquire.